“If you know all this about Lothar, why don’t you do something?” he asked.
“We can’t do anything except avoid him, which is difficult because he’s trained to be friends with everyone,” a man said. “What we can do if he gets too inquisitive is to lead him astray. People don’t cotton on to him. He says what we want to hear and agrees with our views. But he’s false. And he’s dangerous.”
“Wait a minute,” he said, looking at Ilona. “If you knew about Lothar, didn’t Hannes know who he is?”
“Yes, Hannes knew,” Ilona said.
“Why didn’t he say anything? Why didn’t he warn me? Why didn’t he say anything?”
Ilona went up to him.
“He didn’t trust you,” she said. “He didn’t know where you stand.”
“He said he wanted to be left alone.”
“He did want to be left alone. He didn’t want to spy on us or his fellow countrymen.”
“He called after me when I walked out on him. He was going to say something else but he… I was angry, I stormed out. And bumped straight into Lothar.”
He looked at Ilona.
“So that wasn’t a coincidence?”
“I doubt it,” Ilona said. “But it was sure to have happened sooner or later. They were keeping a close watch on Hannes.”
“Are there more people like Lothar at the university?” he asked.
“Yes,” Ilona said. “But we don’t know who they are. We only know about some of them.”
“Lothar is your Betreuer,” said a man sitting in a chair who had been listening to the proceedings without saying a word.
“Yes.”
“What’s your point?” Ilona said to the man.
“Liaisons are supposed to watch the foreigners,” the man said, standing up. “They’re supposed to report everything about the foreigners. We know that Lothar is also meant to get them to collaborate.”
“Tell him what you want to say,” Ilona said and took a step closer to the man.
“How do we know we can trust this friend of yours?”
“I trust him,” Ilona said. “That’s enough.”
“How do you know Lothar is dangerous?” he asked. “Who told you that?”
“That’s our business,” the man said.
“He’s right,” Tomas said, looking towards the man who had doubted his integrity. “Why should you trust me?”
“We trust Ilona,” came the reply.
Ilona smiled awkwardly.
“Hannes said you’d come round eventually,” she said.
He looked at the faded sheet of paper and read the old message from Hannes. Soon it would be evening and the couple would walk past his window. He thought about that night in the basement flat in Leipzig and how it had changed his life. He thought about Ilona and about Hannes and Lothar. And he thought about the terrified people in the basement.
It was the children of those people who had turned Nikolaikirche into their fortress and had rushed out onto the streets when, decades later, the situation finally reached boiling point.
18
Valgerdur was not with Erlendur at Sigurdur Oli’s barbecue, nor was her name mentioned. Elinborg barbecued delicious loins of lamb which she had marinated in a special spicy sauce with shredded lemon peel, but first they ate a shrimp dish that Bergthora made which Elinborg praised highly. The dessert was a mousse by Elinborg; Erlendur did not catch what was in it but it tasted good. He had never intended to go to the barbecue, but eventually gave in after relentless badgering by Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora. It was not as bad as Elinborg’s book launch, however. Bergthora was so pleased he had come that she allowed him to smoke in the living room. Sigurdur Oli’s face fell a mile when she brought him an ashtray. Erlendur watched him with a smile and felt he had earned his reward.
They did not discuss work, apart from one occasion when Sigurdur Oli began wondering why the Russian equipment had been kaput before it went into the lake with the body. Erlendur had told them about the forensics results. The three of them were standing together on the patio. Elinborg was preparing the grill.
“Doesn’t that tell us something?” she asked.
“I don’t know,” Erlendur said. “I don’t know whether it matters whether it worked or not. I can’t see the difference. A listening device is a listening device. Russians are Russians.”
“Yes, I guess so,” Sigurdur Oli said. “Maybe it was damaged in a struggle. Fell to the floor and smashed.”
“Conceivably,” Erlendur said. He looked up at the sun. He did not really know what he was doing out there on the terrace. He had not been to Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora’s house before even though they had worked together for a long time. It did not surprise him to find everything neat and tidy there: designer furniture, objets d’art and smart flooring. Not a speck of dust to be seen. Nor any books.
Indoors, Erlendur perked up when he learned that Teddi, Elinborg’s husband, knew about Ford Falcons. Teddi was a chubby car mechanic who was in love with Elinborg’s cooking, like most people who knew her. His father had once owned a Falcon and he was a great admirer of the model. Teddi told Erlendur that it had been very smooth to drive, with a bench for the front seat, automatic gearbox and a big ivory steering wheel. It was a smaller family car than other American models from the 1960s, which tended to be huge.
“It didn’t do too well on the old Icelandic roads,” Teddi said as he scrounged a cigarette from Erlendur. “Maybe it wasn’t built strongly enough for Icelandic conditions. We had a lot of bother when the axle broke once out in the countryside. Dad had to get a lorry to transport it back to town. They weren’t particularly powerful cars, but good for small families.”
“Were the hubcaps special in any way?” Erlendur asked, lighting Teddi’s cigarette.
“The hubcaps on American cars were always quite flashy, and they were on the Falcon too. But they weren’t really distinctive. Mind you, the Chevrolet…”
For small families, Erlendur thought to himself, and Teddi’s voice faded out. The missing salesman had bought a nice car for the small family he intended to have with the woman from the dairy shop. That was the future. When he disappeared, one hubcap was missing from his car. He may have taken a bend too quickly or struck the kerb. Or maybe the hubcap was simply stolen outside the coach station.
“…Then came the oil crisis in the 1970s and they had to manufacture more economical engines,” Teddi ploughed on, sipping his beer.
Erlendur nodded absent-mindedly and stubbed out his cigarette. He saw Sigurdur Oli opening a window to let the smoke out. Erlendur was trying to cut down but always smoked more than he intended. He was thinking about giving up worrying about cigarettes. It had not done any good so far. He thought about Eva Lind, who had not been in touch since she left rehab. She didn’t worry about her health. He looked out onto the little patio behind Sigurdur Oli and Bergthora’s townhouse, and watched Elinborg barbecuing; she seemed to be warbling a song to herself. He looked into the kitchen where Sigurdur Oli kissed Bergthora on the back of the neck as he walked past her. He cast a sideways glance at Teddi relishing his beer.
Maybe that was enjoying life. Maybe it was that simple when the sun was shining on a pleasant summer’s day.
Instead of going home that evening he drove out of the city, past Grafarholt in the direction of Mosfellsbaer. He took a slip road towards a large farmhouse and turned off it nearer the sea until he reached the land that Haraldur and his brother Johann had farmed. Haraldur had given him only limited directions and had tried to be as unhelpful as possible. He refused to tell Erlendur whether the old farm buildings were still standing, claiming to know nothing about them. His brother Johann had died suddenly from a heart attack, he said. Not everyone’s as lucky as my brother Joi, he added.